Games for Community Health – Wildfire Preparedness

Community safety

San Gabriel Valley San Fernando Valley

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Wildfires cause significant community health impacts in the Los Angeles region. Preparedness actions can reduce these impacts and build community resilience. The Verdugo Hills community is located near the Verdugo Mountains and Angeles National Forest, both of which have had large fires in the past two decades. Most recently, the 2025 Eaton Fire in Altadena triggered evacuations, power outages and poor air quality in the Verdugo Hills community.
Our prior research found that low-income households are less prepared for wildfire smoke, so improving preparedness in these communities is a priority. About 29% of Verdugo Hills residents are below 200% of the federal poverty line and 44% of residents are in disadvantaged areas based on the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool. Taking preparedness actions, such as developing a plan, building a kit, and learning to check air quality and mitigate smoke impacts help protect community health in these environmental disasters.

Games for Community Health aims to improve community wildfire preparedness through innovative game-based training for youth and their families. The program is a partnership between a population health organization (Heluna Health) and a youth-serving organization (Scouting America, Verdugo Hills Council (VHC)). We will utilize high quality, science-based tools such as the Air Quality Index and USDA's Wildfire Risk to Communities, and preparedness resources from fire agencies to provide practical and actionable training for this audience.
The program involves developing an escape room training module to be used at a community preparedness training event. The event will have two portions: 1) a classroom portion for scouts completing the Emergency Preparedness Merit Badge program and getting trained in operating the escape room, and 2) a community workshop portion (with the escape room) open to all school-aged youth and their families. Scouts completing the classroom training will help with preparedness demonstrations and run the escape room as part of their community service requirements.
The program will incorporate key learning objectives, such as writing a family communication plan, packing a Go Bag, identifying mitigation actions appropriate for homes in different risk areas, and interpreting the Air Quality Index. We will distribute multilingual wildfire preparedness resources at the workshop and develop multilingual training toolkits to disseminate information.

The overarching goal of this project is to enhance wildfire and smoke preparedness in the Verdugo Hills community,by engaging youth and families in gamified preparedness training. The anticipated short-term outcomesare increased knowledge and capacity to take personal preparedness actions to reduce the impacts of wildfire and smoke, such as developing a family preparedness plan and having an emergency supplies bag. Given this community’s recent experience with destructive wildfires, youth and other community members may be motivated to share their preparedness knowledge and skills with friends and neighbors, which will propagate this public safety information to others. These actions can lead to longer-term outcomes of reducing fire risks and health impacts in this high wildfire risk area. Beyond this project, we plan to work with other LA County organizations to deliver the wildfire preparedness escape room training to other communities and improve preparedness across our region